


It's Brawl in the Family

by The_Escaped



Series: Brawl in the Family AU [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Awkward murder children trying to protect each other, Because Mercury is a little shit, Brief appearances by the other Beacon Students, Gen, I had a fever dream and it spiraled out of control, Implied Past Gemstones (Ruby/Emerald), Implied/Referenced Abuse, Mercury and Emerald get out AU, Plot Twists, So is Emerald really, Swearing, alternating pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-17 19:16:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16102076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Escaped/pseuds/The_Escaped
Summary: “So what, we just run away?” Emerald wanted to know. Her face had gone twisted and haggard. “Salem will hunt us down. Cinder would do it on her own, if we-” She couldn’t even say the words.“I have an idea,” he said slowly, “You’re gonna hate it.”Or, the one where Mercury and Emerald get the fuck out of dodge, and get more than they bargained for in the process.





	1. Volume 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I had a really vivid dream the last time I was sick where Mercury and Emerald realized how in over their heads they were and this is the result. It ended up a lot longer than I thought it would, but that just gives my little murder children more time to shine I guess!
> 
> This is my first RWBY fic, so I hope you like it!

It started small. Looking back, it was so small that he couldn’t remember exactly when it began. Was it in the confines of Salem’s home, Salem whispering in her ear, feeding the hunger left by her defeat? Was it in the halls of Beacon, when Emerald tricked and lied to the students on her orders and accidentally learned how to act her age?

Had whatever had happened in Ozpin’s tower been the shattering point for Cinder, or had she been cracked the whole time Mercury had known her?

When it came down to it, he couldn’t say. There had been bigger things to worry about. Codes to memorize, Dust to steal. Plans- and the occasional person- to execute. Then there was the school to infiltrate, and plenty of goody two-shoes to pump for information, using enough sweet talk that Mercury’s teeth were probably rotted through. He wasn’t good at it. Marcus Black’s training had never included subtlety, not in ways that went further than getting close enough to a target to end them. The children at the school- how could they be the same age as Mercury and Emerald and still so impossibly _young_ \- were easy to con, but it still took work. There wasn’t time for anything else, not when they were working to take down Beacon right under the noses of Ozpin and Ironwood.

And then they needed to escape, and make sure that everyone in the Vale would see the videos of Atlesian soldiers attacking helpless students, and then get out of the Grimm-infested city without anyone seeing them.

Then Beacon fell. Then that cheery, pint-sized brat with the stupid cape hurt Cinder so bad that they had to carry her out of the tower.

“I don’t get it,” Mercury said when they were safely on their own ship, “I fought her. She was easy.” Any kid who joined Beacon two years early was someone they’d known to keep an eye on, but she hadn’t been much more difficult than any of the other students in her little group. Her sister had been a harder match, and he hadn’t even been trying to win that one.

Cinder glared at him. The right side of her face was still a mess of blood and burned skin, extending all the way to her ear. She shook off Emerald’s hesitant ministrations and grabbed for the collar of his shirt.

“Do not- _dare-_ think you have the _right_ -” Her voice was horrible; raspy, bubbling, like she was choking on her own blood. Then it stopped working completely, and there was just a ragged hiss of air.

The most unnerving part of it all was that she still didn’t let go of his jacket, didn’t stop glaring at him even as blood ran down her face.

Emerald pulled her away eventually, glaring at Mercury like it was his fault that Cinder wouldn’t let her treat the injuries. Amateurish, for her to broadcast how shaken she was all over her face like that. Mercury crossed his arms and leaned back. He was better than that.

Cinder released him, only to slap Emerald’s hands away, her teeth bared in a snarl, and there was something so animal in her rage that even Emerald, for all her devotion, didn’t try to reach for her again.

Maybe that was the start. Mercury couldn’t be sure.

But then there were in Salem’s base, and it was too late to go back.

 

 

His old man had taught Mercury how to watch a target since before he could walk. By the time he’d killed him, Mercury didn’t know any other way to look at people. It was instinctive, watching. Picking out weaknesses, spotting danger. Why would he want to look at anyone any other way? This was the important stuff. Everything else was just white noise.

So he watched, and he waited, and slowly, with the dawning sense of how thoroughly fucked he was, he realized he didn’t like what he was seeing.

And Mercury didn’t even _like_ Emerald, with her obnoxious, puppy-dog eyes at Cinder and how she was half-trained at best, a cobbled-together amalgam of street fighting and light fingers and nothing else, except a doe-eyed, unwavering devotion towards Cinder.

It had irritated Mercury from the very beginning, her incompetence and her devotion equally. The one thing his father had never tolerated, and the one thing he’d demanded above everything else.

But until now, it hadn’t irritated Cinder too. And irritating Cinder was much more dangerous. Mercury could keep his head down, could tiptoe around a bad mood. But Emerald couldn’t seem to keep herself from tripping into Cinder’s temper every time she turned around. The more she tried to help, the angrier Cinder became.

He didn’t even like Emerald. But he didn’t like the way the others looked at her more, the smirking scientist and the crazy faunus, the way they leered at her exposed skin. He didn’t like the way Salem passed over them both, as if they were tools that were on the verge of losing their value, and she was deciding what to do with them once they did. He especially didn’t like how Cinder didn’t seem to care, if she even noticed, too busy training with Salem in parts of the base they weren’t allowed in, too busy stewing over her injuries with a hand on her ruined eye.

His old man would be horrified that he’d let his guard so far down that he felt betrayed by it. (Mercury had killed him, but he still couldn’t get his voice out of his head.)

But he wasn’t stupid like Emerald, so desperate for any kind of approval that she would do anything for the person who might give it to her. He knew the signs by now for when to get away from someone _now_. Gods know he’d lived through enough of them with his old man.

When Cinder had first recruited them, she’d done so gently. She’d given them a choice. She’d been all sensuous grace and cutting smiles, but they _were_ smiles. She’d taught Emerald, maybe not patiently, but well, and she had quite literally got Mercury back on his feet.

She hadn’t told them what had happened with Nikos up in the tower, and Emerald had quickly learned to stop asking. But whatever that bright light in Ozpin’s tower had been, it had burned the gentleness right out of her.

Mercury bit his tongue like Marcus Black had taught him to, ignoring the copper on his tongue, and watched.

Emerald started getting hurt again in training sessions with Cinder. That hadn’t happened since Mercury had just started joining up with them, when she could barely land a hit without her Semblance, but it started again pretty soon after Cinder got back on her feet. Small things, but Mercury knew what to look for. He remembered.

It was unforgivably sloppy to not notice when that started, but Mercury tracked it once he did, watched as the bruises escalated to scrapes and then past that.

When it turned into burns, Mercury realized how far things had spiraled out of control.

“You need to stand up to her,” Mercury said one day after a training session that had left her particularly charred. He was rereading the comic he’d brought from Beacon, pretending not to watch her sit carefully. Her ankle was one big bruise. Mercury didn’t want to ask what the point of the training had been; Emerald’s excuses were running thin these days. “She’ll keep walking all over you otherwise.”

“You act like you’re so smart, but every time she comes into the room you shut up,” she retorted.

That was because Mercury knew when to shut up. Maybe if Emerald would stop annoying Cinder, she would stop hurting her.

He opened his mouth to tell her that, but then he saw the expression on her face. He was pretty sure he disliked that expression most of all.

There wasn’t anything he could say about that, or do about it. Mercury settled back down and flicked to the next page, pretending he wasn’t paying attention as she leaned her head back and blinked at the ceiling.

The next day, Mercury was in the area Salem had allotted them for training when Cinder and Emerald showed up, running through forms. Emerald glared at him, but Cinder allowed it with a wave of her hand.

Cinder didn’t touch Emerald this time, and she didn’t burn her. What she did was almost worse, and had Mercury jogging after Emerald once the coast was clear.

“How often does she make you do that?” Mercury demanded, once they were out of the room, tangled emotions overruling the common sense that told him to wait until they were safer. Emerald tried to shrug out of his grip but Mercury didn’t let her, pushing her against the wall until she had to pay attention. “How often?”

“It’s not any of your business!” Emerald snarled at him. She tried to break out of his grip but Mercury had a stance made out of steel now. He didn’t budge. “What we do in my training sessions-”

Mercury laughed. It was his father’s laugh, hard and cruel and disbelieving, the furthest thing from happy, and it came out without any conscience thought on his part.

“You think that’s _training_?” And that shut Emerald up, just for a second, but Mercury was too angry to care. “That doesn’t have anything to _do_ with training!”

Mercury didn’t know Salem’s plan in its entirety. He didn’t know how the Grimm were created in this place, or the way they were able to get from Salem’s base to different points of Remnant so quickly. But Cinder burning Ruby Rose alive in some fucked-up version of catharsis? That was a kind of anger that Mercury was very, _very_ familiar with.

“She tells me what illusions to make and I make them,” Emerald said flatly, and gods, but she was _finally_ looking at something like it was a threat, even if it was him, “That’s training. It’s my Semblance.”

But she didn’t look like she believed it, and she didn’t try to fight her way out of Mercury’s grip again. Mercury stared at her a little longer, then eased up.

As soon as she was able, Emerald jerked out of his hold and raised a foot to kick him.

“That’s gonna hurt you more than me,” he pointed out.

She punched him in the arm.

“Don’t grab me again.”

“Trust me, kid, I’m the last one you need to worry about that.” He felt her look at him as he moved down the hallway but didn’t stop walking. Looking back would mean taking his eyes off the doorways opening on either side, where Tyrion or Watts could be lurking.

After a pause, she caught up to him and kept pace. Just like in the forest on their way to the White Fang; Mercury and Emerald, at Cinder’s back and against the world. Ready to change the world. It stuck in his throat, how wrong everything had gone since then.

“You’re like a year older than me tops,” she muttered, under her breath, “Stop calling me kid.”

But she stayed at his side the whole way back to their rooms, and after that, whenever she wasn’t with Cinder she would usually show up somewhere in his vicinity.

    
  


Two nights later someone knocked on his door. Mercury bolted upright, flailing to get out of bed. It was Emerald, and she was so angry that she hit him with an illusion when he finally opened the door, blinding him with bright lights.

“What the _fuck_ -” he began, grabbing her, but then she hissed and the illusion shattered into pieces, leaving him blinking stars out of his eyes. There was something hot and sticky under his hand. Emerald ripped her arm out of his grip, taking several steps back. She put her hand over what he could barely make out as a nasty burn. In the dark, shrunk and shaking as she was, the movement made it look like she was hugging herself.

“Your advice sucks,” she told him, and she was so rattled she couldn’t even stop her voice from trembling, “You stand up to her next time.”

Mercury swore and hauled her into the room.

She fought him, but it was more reflex than anything else. Once she was in the room and he let go of her, she just stood there. She even let him examine the burn, which was just as bad as he’d thought at first glance.

“How many times has she done this before?” he demanded.

She didn’t answer. That was worse than anything she could have said.

This wasn’t the way Cinder had operated before, hard but not relentless, controlling the entire chessboard. This was uncoordinated and cruel, and he couldn’t think of a single reason for her to do it other than that she wanted to.

This was exactly like Marcus, down to the bruises on her face, and Mercury couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before. There wasn’t any coming back from this, he realized. This wasn’t going to get better.

Emerald’s eyes flicked to him and he realized he’d said the last bit out loud. Sloppy, and it could even be enough to get him killed around here.

“And what are we supposed to do about it, genius?” she wanted to know. Her voice was hard again but she was still shaking. He could feel it where he held her arm. “What’s your brilliant plan?”

“This isn’t our fight.” None of it was, not Salem’s grand plan, not Cinder’s revenge. This wasn’t their fight and Mercury was damned if either of them was going to die for it. This was like Marcus, plain and simple, and Mercury hadn’t killed his old man and burned down his house to get stuck in the same mess again.

Emerald scoffed while he rooted around his bag for his supplies until he came up with burn salve.

“So what, we just run away?” Emerald wanted to know. Her face had gone twisted and haggard. “Salem will hunt us down. Cinder would do it on her own, if we-” She couldn’t even say the words.

She was right, but he didn’t want to admit it. Mercury put salve over the burn, and examined her arm for anything else. There was a large scrape on her elbow, but that had already been there. They’d got it last time they’d run into those Beacon idiots, about a week ago. Figured, even at their strongest they couldn’t do worse than Cinder on a _good_ day.

Oh. Huh.

“What is it?”

“I have an idea,” he said slowly, “You’re gonna hate it.”

 

 

Usually Yang went for Mercury as soon as they came into view. She had a bone to pick and she was going to pick it. Ruby hadn’t ever met a single person who could hold a grudge as well as Yang did, and what she had against Mercury was a hell of a grudge.

So when they came across the pair of them in the forest while on a job for a nearby town, Yang went in with gauntlets whirring, but instead of meeting her like he usually did, Mercury shoved Emerald in the way and slid under Yang as she flew forward, going straight for Ruby.

Ruby eeped, jamming Crescent Rose forward. Mercury’s fighting style was her worst nightmare, close and physical and everything she was weakest at. She swung Crescent at him, hoping for it to blast him back far enough for her to get some distance but ready for an air blast to send her flying.

“Your blond friend says you guys’re the heroes.”

She’d screwed her eyes shut. Now she opened them again. Mercury was too close, one of his boots level with her face. She could see down the barrel of the gun in his heel. He could shoot her point-blank, but he didn't. Instead, he was pressing his leg down just enough to pin her scythe, looking at her for…something.

“He says you’re the good guys,” he repeated with a grunt, “Was he right or not?”

“What?” Ruby looked around for Jaune. He was with Yang, the pair of them punching at air. Emerald was watching them, using her Semblance to steer them away from her, but she wasn’t attacking.

Ruby remembered Emerald when she’d pretended to be a student, giggling and picking Ruby’s pockets for hair ties and gum, passing her notes in Professor Port’s class. Emerald, warm against her on cool evenings touring the fairgrounds. The times they’d fought her since then, she hadn’t looked like that girl. She’d been hard, brutal. Cruel in how she used the weaknesses they’d shown her. She’d faced them all with a sneer and picked apart their strategies with her illusions.

This girl didn’t look like either Emerald she knew. She looked tired. More than that, she looked afraid. She jerked back as a blind strike from Yang came too close, and there was a burn on the back of her arm.

“I’m gonna need an answer, Red.”

Why was there a burn on her arm? Ruby swung her gaze back to Mercury. “What’s wrong?” For a split second, he was too surprised to snarl at her, and Ruby realized he looked just as tired as Emerald did. “We can help.”

Mercury’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. He opened his mouth, but then there was a cry behind them and they both sprang apart, Crescent Rose swinging wide. Yang had finally hit Emerald through her illusion, and she’d slammed into a tree, slumping to the ground. Jaune tripped as whatever illusion he’d been fighting vanished.

Ruby saw panic flit across Mercury’s face, and then he was flying across the field, nearly as fast as she was with her Semblance. Ruby hauled Crescent Rose up, machinery clicking into rifle mode as he went for Yang, but he only kicked her arm back down as she aimed Ember Celia at Emerald, using the momentum from her blast to flip to his partner’s side.

Through her scope, she could see Mercury saying something to Emerald out of the corner of his mouth, yanking her to feet. Emerald was holding her head. Her eyes were unfocused. The angle of her arm gave Ruby one last view of the burn. They backed away from Yang and Jaune. Mercury met Ruby’s eyes once, then they were gone again.

Ruby watched them go, then lowered Crescent Rose.

“What was that about?” Yang demanded when she ran back over to them. Her sister was helping Jaune to his feet. His sword was a few feet away; Ruby retrieved it. “That was hardly a fight!”

“Hardly,” echoed Jaune faintly, still cross-eyed.

Ruby looked back to where Mercury and Emerald had vanished into the tree line.

“I…I don’t know.”

“We should tell Professor Ozpin about it.”

Yang didn’t look happy with that suggestion, but then she hadn’t been happy with Ozpin since she’d caught up to them in Mistral. It had something to do with whatever her mother had told her. For once, Ruby agreed with her. She wanted to know what Mercury had been about to tell her, before they’d run. She had a feeling Ozpin would want her to stop going on missions if he knew Cinder was still taking an interest in her.

Jaune sighed like he knew what they were thinking, rubbing his head.

“Did Mercury hurt you?” Yang asked Ruby, taking her by the shoulders to look her up and down. She gave Ruby a brisk once-over. Yang had been looking out for Ruby since before she could walk. Ruby couldn’t think of anything she could do to make her stop. “What was he saying?”

“No, he…he didn’t want to fight.”

It wasn’t until the words had left her mouth that Ruby realized she meant them.

“He didn’t want to fight,” Yang repeated, flat with disbelief, “Mercury. Who threw himself at you the second we saw each other.”

“Ruby,” Jaune began, but Ruby didn’t want to hear it.

“He didn’t. He could have shot me in the head,” she insisted, and Yang’s grip on her shoulders went tight, “But he didn’t. He wasn’t trying to fight for real.”

“Ruby-”

Yang frowned. “That was some act then.” But she didn’t argue more. They knew how good an act Mercury and Emerald could put up if they wanted to.

“I don’t know why. But they weren’t really fighting. I think something’s wrong.”

Yang shrugged. “Anything that’s wrong for them is right for us, so I’m glad.”

Ruby frowned. “But we don’t know why-”

“Ruby!”

They both turned to look at Jaune. He pointed at Crescent Rose.

“Unless you put that there, it might help you find out.”

There was a piece of string wrapped around Rose Crescent, tied firmly. It was holding a folded piece of paper.

 

 

Emerald stopped running first once they made it back through the portal and reached Salem’s base. She was holding her head in both hands, trying to block out the light.

“Ugh…”

“We have to keep going.”

“I kept it up too long,” she said, “Two people is…”

Mercury slowed, then stopped. It wasn’t safe in the hallways. They were too open, exposed. There was nowhere to hide. Anyone could stumble on them here, Tyrion or Watts. Cinder. _Salem_. Hazel wouldn’t care, but he was the only one who wouldn’t. It wasn't  _safe_ here.

But Emerald was holding herself up with one arm against the wall and the other pressed against her face, and she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Mercury could just see the set of her jaw under her arm, how hard she was gritting her teeth against the migraine.

He ground his teeth. “Five minutes.”

It wasn’t safe for them together in the halls. Being alone would be something close to suicide. He leaned against the wall next to her while she breathed carefully, taking stock of the damage.

Most of it was superficial. Emerald wasn’t as good as him, but most people weren’t. Emerald could have run circles around Team RWBY before the Fall of Beacon and however good they were now, with her Semblance she was still miles ahead of most of them. She could hold her own long enough for Mercury to get the message to Red. A few scrapes from hitting the tree. The hit Xiao Long had gotten in would leave a nasty bruise, but other than that they hadn’t really touched her.

Blood on her face though. She was biting through her lip. Her fingers were curling in her hair, and they would draw blood too if she didn’t stop soon.

He poked the spot on her arm where Xiao Long had gotten her.

“Sloppy.”

Emerald hissed, jerking away from him, but her grip on her head loosened when her head came up to glare at him.

“Shut up!”

He smirked, and would have said more about her sorry excuse for a technique, but then there was a whisper of fabric on stone behind him, and fear flashed across Emerald’s face.

“You’re back.”

Mercury was close enough to feel Emerald flinch. He was too well-trained to show weakness like that though. He only pushed off from the wall to face Cinder as she approached, because she’d started to get angry about informality shortly after she got her eyepatch. After a pause, Emerald did the same.

She came to a stop in front of them. Cinder had cut her hair short in recent weeks, first hacking away the parts that had been ruined in the fight by whatever it was Red had done, then carefully trimmed by Emerald. There was something hungry in her gaze. Sometimes Mercury caught himself wondering if it was something inhuman. But he’d known plenty of people, through his father’s work, through his own. There was nothing inhuman in that look.

“Well? I don’t see the Rose girl, so I can only assume that you failed. _Again_.”

In his peripheral vision he could see Emerald shrink.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am.”

“How many more times am I going to have to hear that?”

Mercury shifted. Too much to the side and he would shield Emerald from Cinder entirely. That would be the ideal in a perfect world, but this sure as all hells wasn’t that, and trying to protect Emerald obviously would just put her in more danger. So instead he moved just enough that her gaze snapped to him, furious but still contained. Hidden from Cinder, Mercury could feel Emerald curl fingers into the back of his shirt.

Cinder hadn’t tried to treat him like she did Emerald yet. She knew she couldn’t. Mercury wasn’t her lapdog like Emerald. He wasn’t going to let her beat him like he was.

Mercury had a nasty feeling it was just a matter of time until she forgot that though. Or until she realized that in siding with her so publicly, he’d burned all his other bridges in one fell swoop.

“They’re with Qrow now. He’s training them.” He spoke quietly but firmly. Mercury couldn’t afford to show weakness. He couldn’t give Cinder an opening like the one she was looking for.

“You’re telling me that you can’t take down a handful of children on your own?”

“I- We’re trying,” Emerald piped up, and there was still such desperate _need_ in her voice that Mercury felt his stomach turn with disgust. There wasn’t anything for her here. Why was that so hard for her to get into her head?

Cinder looked as revolted as he felt.

“I don’t expect you to try. I expect you to succeed.”

She reached for Emerald and Emerald flinched.

It would have been better to let her. The only reason he’d gotten so far was not playing his hand. If Cinder knew- if _Salem_ knew- what they’d just done, they’d be worse than dead. The _only_ thing keeping them alive was letting them think he didn’t care. That he didn’t have a stake in any of this.

But Emerald flinched, and all Mercury could think about was Marcus, and his body moved before his brain could catch up, grabbing Cinder’s wrist before she could wrap her hand around Emerald’s arm.

Cinder went very still, but it was from surprise. Then rage flashed in her eyes. Mercury matched her gaze, not blinking. He didn’t let go of her hand, didn’t let her move it an inch, until she was grinding her teeth.

“Let go.” Her hand began to heat, then to spark. Only then, not looking away, did he finally relax his grip.

She was still angry, and that was one of the most dangerous things Mercury could think of. But she didn’t reach for Emerald again.

“Don’t forget your place,” she snarled. Then, “Emerald.”

And Emerald went, because Emerald was so desperate for Cinder’s approval, even now, and because Emerald was so terrified of her in equal parts. So she shuffled closer, until she was behind Cinder, instead of him. She didn’t look at Mercury. She didn’t look at Cinder either, just kept her head down.

Cinder didn’t reach for her again, only lifted her chin slightly in Mercury’s direction. He got the message. She didn’t have to reach for Emerald.

“We’ll review your training,” she told Emerald, voice starting to catch and rasp as it did when she spoke too loudly these days, “Now. So I can see what you’re doing wrong.”

“We were going to practice team attacks,” he said, forcing himself to sound bored, “How long is this going to take?”

Cinder turned to glare at Emerald. “As long as it takes to get it right.”

Emerald’s head ducked down further, fingers twisting together. She kept her mouth shut.

Training with Cinder always ended with Emerald brittle and charred at the edges. It left her injured and twitchy and dangerously low on Aura in a place they couldn’t afford to be taken off-guard. She couldn’t afford to be running low on energy and Aura if they went through with their plan. If Red actually was the kind of person she thought she was.

They couldn’t afford to have Cinder think they were up to something either.

So Mercury crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, forcing boredom to slide over his face, and pretended he didn’t have a care in the world as Cinder strode back down the hall, Emerald scurrying after her.

He had work to do anyway.


	2. Volume 2

When they were little, Yang had almost gotten them both killed. That was one of the facts that wasn’t spoken of in their little home in Patch, like Raven leaving, like Mom.  The incident with the Beowolves was just another ghost in their closet, that occasionally slipped out, going about unspoken but never quite unacknowledged.

Ruby didn’t remember that though. She’d been too little. Uncle Qrow had told her a little, and Yang had told her more when she was older, voice thick with guilt. But she didn’t remember the encounter with the Beowolves herself, only the aftermath of it.

Instead, when she thought of her childhood and Yang, it was always her big sister a few steps ahead of her, hand in Ruby’s, picking her up after she fell or fighting off the odd bully. Yang, figuring out how to make dinner on nights when Dad had to work late at Signal, forcing Ruby into sparring matches to make her a better fighter. Always Yang looking out for her. Ruby had grown up with Yang at her back, and known that even if she was getting stronger, she would still have someone to protect her. She didn’t know what it would be like to not have someone like that.

But when she thought of the desperate way that Mercury had shoved Emerald into the line of fire with Yang so he could get the chance to tie this note around her scythe, so small it had almost gone unnoticed, she started to get an idea of the lengths it might make someone go.

_Get us out. We’ll tell you everything. Tomorrow midnight._

There were coordinates written down too, in the far corner of the paper. Ruby could recognize Emerald’s handwriting from the notes they’d passed during Professor Port’s lectures, though she’d never seen it so shaky before, when the only thing they’d had to worry about was the professor yelling at them in front of the class.

Emerald’s note here was currently causing a lot of shouting too, but she wasn’t around to hear it the chaos unfolding in the crowded kitchen. That was a very Emerald way to go about it, Ruby thought sourly as she tried to make her case the loudest so people would actually hear it, causing problems where she wasn’t around to deal with the fallout.

“Let me get this straight. The two kids who infiltrated Beacon, who helped orchestrate the whole attack, who’ve been trying to kill you, they told you that they’re giving up and you _just believed them_?”

Ruby tried not to glare at Uncle Qrow. “We don’t know that they helped _orchestrate_ it.”

“The two who were so good at lying that they got past Ozpin _and_ Glynda, who I know for a fact it is damn hard to slip anything past.”

Ruby pressed her lips together and scowled.

“They don’t even like us,” Weiss pointed out, “They hate us.”

And Ruby knew that was true, under the cacophony of everyone speaking at once, she thought uneasily about how that was the problem. How desperate did someone have to be, to ask the people they betrayed for help?

Ilia and Sun were in the kitchen too, but they were staying out of it, Sun leaning against the counter Ilia sat on. Ilia looked upset. Blake and Sun had glossed over her appearance, but the way she was twisting her fingers together, mouth half-open to say something, made Ruby think she had more of a stake in this than she was pretending.

Blake had a seat at the table.

“Sometimes people do bad things because they don’t have a choice,” she said, and she sounded angry. In Ruby’s peripheral vision, Ilia winced, but Ruby didn’t think Blake was mad at her. This was how Blake usually sounded when she thought about the White Fang. “Or they don’t think they have a choice.”

Ruby gave her a small smile. It was good to have _someone_ on her side.

“Kid, I know that better than anyone else,” Uncle Qrow said, “But they had choices. They had plenty of them. And they used each of those choices to screw us over more.”

“The whole thing reeks of a trap.” Oscar had Ozpin’s cadence in his tone; he had a cold look in his eyes that didn’t sit well with Oscar’s child’s face. She wished he would go away. Oscar was a lot more likely to be on her side. “And we know they like traps. They’ve already fooled us into thinking that they were sympathetic characters before.”

“Why would they do it again, though?” Weiss asked, gesturing, “We’re already suspicious of them. They have no reason to think we’d help them.”

“Then why would they ask? Ruby, they have a history of playing on the kindness of others,” Ren said, and Ruby had been hoping that he would be the one from JNPR who would help her out. Jaune had been glaring into the distance since they'd unfolded the note, and Nora had her arms crossed and her mouth set into a thin line. She couldn’t look for support from either of them. “We have enough to worry about already. We shouldn’t invite trouble.”

“You didn’t see the way they looked,” Ruby insisted, “They weren’t lying.” Looking to Jaune would be too much of a risk; she turned to Yang for support. She’d been there too. She’d seen them. Ruby couldn’t have been the only one to see how afraid the two of them were.

Yang was standing by the doorway. She had a tight, pensive frown on her face. She didn’t look up and she didn’t say anything.

“They were scared. They’re asking for help,” Ruby repeated, mouth dry. She couldn’t stop thinking about the burn on Emerald’s arm. The longer she thought about it, the worse it started looking in her mind’s eye. The more it started looking like a hand print.  “That’s what we’re supposed to do. Help people. And they said they would give us information, which we need.”

“Which is all well and good if they were telling the truth, but we don’t know that.” That was Uncle Qrow, looking as frustrated as she felt but for the opposite reason. “We have no reason to think that this isn’t a trap. We can’t afford to risk it.”

“I can’t do it, Ruby.” Jaune looked up at last, and Ruby hadn’t seen that look on his face since the fall of Beacon. Seeing it now made her know she’d lost. “I can’t help them, not knowing what they did to Pyrrha. I wish I could be good enough to do it. But I can’t.”

Ruby fought longer, but it didn’t do any good. The debate was already finished.

Uncle Qrow caught her on the stairs.

“Look, kid.” He looked pained. He hadn’t wanted them to be on this trip, she remembered; he’d wanted them to stay out of all of this. Now he looked like he was searching for words, rubbing the back of his neck. “These are the choices we have to make.”

“ _I’m_ not making them,” she snapped. His face went pinched for a second, like she’d hit him. Ruby opened her mouth to apologize, but then she thought of the note and the look on Emerald’s face and she swallowed the words down and turned away. He didn’t follow her up the stairs, so he couldn’t have felt that bad about it.

Weiss slipped into the room eventually, looking cautious.

“You didn’t come down for dinner.” Ruby rolled over so she was facing the wall. She didn’t want to yell at Weiss. She didn’t want to yell at anyone, but if she opened her mouth she would. “I made you some coffee. It has a disgusting amount of sugar.”

Ruby didn’t move. There was a clink as Weiss put the cup down. She took a breath, on the verge of saying something, and Ruby tensed. Weiss wasn’t good at comforting anyone, and usually Ruby understood that but she didn’t think she could this time.

Then Weiss exhaled, patted Ruby on the head gently, and went over to the desk.

After a few minutes Ruby rolled back around cautiously. Weiss was sitting at the desk, bent over the tome of glyphs she insisted on lugging around because _they were still technically students, Ruby_. She wasn’t trying to comfort Ruby, but she wasn’t leaving either. The noise from her pencil was just loud enough for Ruby to know that she was there.

Ruby was so glad that Weiss was the first person she saw during the Initiation.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about the fight, and the note, and the way Mercury had looked when Emerald got taken out of the fight. She lay in her bed, and stared up at the ceiling, and when she closed her eyes she could see a burn shaped like a hand.

Ruby shoved the blankets off and reached for Crescent Rose.

Weiss was asleep on top of her book, pencil in hand. She didn't stir as Ruby tiptoed around her and eased the door shut again.

Team JNPR was asleep in a pile of arms and legs on the sleeper sofa, Nora mumbling about pancakes. Blake was nothing but a lump of blankets, Sun and her new (old? She hadn’t explained much to them yet) friend Ilia sprawled out on the carpet. They’d run out of beds in the house a while ago.

Yang was in her room. She’d locked herself in there for some quiet while she worked on her arm’s maintenance, and Ruby deeply, deeply hoped she was asleep, because if she found out what Ruby was doing she would kill her dead.

Qrow and Ozpin were awake, but they were also locked up in one of the rooms, discussing their next move, and experience said they would be at that for awhile. There was no one to hear Ruby slide silently down the hall, sneak the door open, and slip out.

She eased it closed, fumbling slighting to avoid dropping Crescent Rose, and then slumped in relief when the hinge didn’t squeak.

“Everyone else asleep?”

She dropped Crescent Rose. Ruby jumped out of her skin and grabbed it just before it hit the ground, whirling.

Yang was leaning against the side of the house, arms crossed loosely over her chest. The fingers on her right arm stood out in the darkness, but her gloves covered the rest of it. She was dressed for stealth and battle, just like Ruby.

“Y-yang, I-”

“Don’t. We both know what you’re doing.”

Ruby hesitated, fingers digging into the reassuringly familiar metal of Crescent Rose. It was so still in the darkness. So quiet that her ears rang with it. She couldn’t help but feel like someone was watching them, even if she’d triple checked everyone else.

And Yang was just standing there, watching her.

Ruby drew herself up.

“I’m going. I’ll go on my own if no one else wants to. You can’t stop me.”

“I know I can’t stop you from leaving.”

That hurt like a blow to the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Ruby didn’t want to leave Yang; she’d never wanted to leave Yang, she had been going to come _back_. But Yang didn’t press her advantage. Instead she looked away from Ruby, inspecting her nails. It was a move designed to make it look like she wasn’t paying attention, and would have worked better if the hand she was inspecting actually had fingernails.

“You really think they’re worth helping?”

Ruby flushed with anger before she realized that Yang didn’t sound angry, or sarcastic. She wasn’t trying to argue with Ruby like the others had done. She was watching her closely, because she actually wanted to hear her reasoning, and Ruby couldn’t walk away from her without an explanation. Not again.

Ruby remembered the feel of Emerald’s lips on hers, the press of her against Ruby as they sat on the fountain edge and stargazed one night after another, the cold air making her warmth into a beacon. She remembered how much it hurt, to fight Emerald after that and know she remembered too and was _laughing_ about it.

But she also remembered how bright the burn on her arm had been in the clearing and how _tired_ she had looked, and she knew she hadn’t been mistaken. Regular burns didn’t have fingermarks.

“It’s not about what they’re worth. It’s about whether I’m the kind of person who can hear someone ask me for help and then ignore it. And I’m not.” She didn’t want to be, anyway. All those stories Yang had told her growing up. Fairytales. Fables. She’d wanted to be like the heroes in them so much, fighting off Grimm and with a hand outstretched to anyone who needed it.

Emerald and Mercury were fighting something. It wasn’t a Grimm. Ruby didn’t know what it was. But she wanted to reach her hand out anyway.

Yang was watching, but she still didn’t look mad, only contemplative. Ruby was going to be late to the checkpoint if she hung around much longer, but this moment felt important. Like everything hung in the balance.

“It could be a trap,” she said, just like Ozpin, but not as…dismissive. Not as sure. There was a crooked smile creeping up her face, like she knew exactly what Ruby was going to say.

That would make one of them.

“It could be,” Ruby conceded finally, “But I’m going anyway.”

“Of course you are.” She pushed off from the wall, stretching her arms out. “Alright. Let’s do this, before Uncle Qrow realizes how quiet you’re being.”

Ruby gaped.

“But, you thought it was a bad idea-”

“Don’t worry,” she said, punching her own fists lightly. Ruby saw the faint outline of the updated Ember Celia she’d been fiddling with over her sleeves, the one that could extend like a blade for mid-range combat. “I still do.”

“And you tried to talk me out of it for hours-”

“Yup.”

“And you hate Mercury-”

“Yeah, but I love _you_ , doofus.” Ruby stopped, flustered. Yang was smiling at her, and the way she did it, head tilted to the side, something wry in her expression, reminded Ruby of all the times Yang had patched up her scraped knees and got her back on her feet. “You’re my sister, Ruby. We look out for each other. I’m not letting you go haring off into something like this on your own. I can’t stop you, so I’m joining you.”

Ruby’s throat felt tight. Her eyes burned. She nodded quickly.

“Good. Now let’s go, before anyone realizes how stupid we’re being.”

“Thanks, sis,” Ruby said, once they were further down the road.

“Eh. The way I see it, if you’re right, I picked the right side. And if you’re wrong, I get to punch Mercury in the face. Win win for me.”

Ruby grinned, and started to run, Yang at her side. Just like always.

 

 

Cinder worked Emerald late into the next day, while Mercury stewed in his own helplessness and punched the wall and stuffed all their most important things into a bag. He didn’t panic. He was not panicking. He was a professional, dammit. So he kept on not panicking and re-sorting the bag and counting down the hours until a familiar code was knocked on their door, and then he wrenched it open so fast the person on the other side almost fell into the room.

Emerald was shaking with exhaustion. The smell of smoke came off her clothing, her skin.

“I’m gonna need another minute,” she said thinly, and sat down right there in the doorway.

Mercury yanked her inside and kicked the door shut, then sat down too. Emerald slumped against him and groped for the stand by the door.

“Did you hide food in every piece of furniture?” he demanded as she withdrew three energy bars and ripped them all open with her teeth.

Her mouth was full, so she gave him a rude gesture instead of swearing. It wasn’t an answer.

“What’s your Aura like?” he asked in a much softer voice, and she made a face around the last of the energy bars.

“I’ll get by.” Pressed so close against her, he could feel her heart hammering in her rib cage. He hoped she couldn’t feel his. “Merc?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me we’ll make it.”

It was a good thing she’d closed her eyes. He didn’t have to shuffle his expression into something resembling confident.

“Are you stupid? We’re the best.”

She rested against him for one more precious minute, and then clambered back to her feet.

“Then let’s go.”

 

 

They made it to the checkpoint with a half minute to spare, but the clearing Mercury’s coordinates had led to was empty. Ruby stalled at the edge of it, not sure that to do. A beat of panic started drumming in her head. This was her call. If it went wrong, it would be her fault.

“They’re not here.” Yang said, scanning the surrounding trees, “Feels like a trap to me.”

“How can it be a trap if nobody’s here?” Ruby wanted to know, snippy just to cover the nerves thrumming through her blood, but then there was rustling at the opposite edge of the glade and they both snapped to attention, Crescent Rose whirring into sniper mode.

Mercury and Emerald picked their way through the underbrush and stopped just at the other edge, watching them warily. Emerald hovered just behind Mercury, a parody of their fighting style. She looked even worse than she had in their last fight. Mercury had a bag slung over one shoulder.

“You came,” Emerald said, like she couldn’t believe it. Mercury looked surprised too, but only for a moment. Then he started sizing them up just like Yang was doing to him.

Slowly, Yang shifted out of her fighting stance, crossing her arms loosely and watching them with narrowed eyes. Maybe she was only now seeing what Ruby had seen yesterday, the bruise-like bags under Emerald’s eyes, the mark on her arm.

“You said you wanted out,” she said, stepping between them and her kid sister, “How about you prove it, before we do something Ruby might regret.”

Mercury grimaced, but tilted his head to Emerald, and they stepped closer, hands up. Emerald handed over her kusarigama to Yang without a fight.

“I keep mine until we’re close to your safehouse,” Mercury said.

Yang didn’t look satisfied.

“And if you decide to ditch your friend?”

Mercury scowled.

“I go with Emerald. We’ll tell you everything you want to know. Do we have a deal or not?”

“That's just what I wanted to know.”

Ruby’s heart stopped. Yang jerked, spilling Emerald’s weapons across the ground. They whipped around; from the corner of her eye Ruby saw Emerald go pale, saw Mercury drag her behind him as he whirled, too surprised to not look panicked.

Cinder stood in the path in the underbrush Mercury and Emerald had left. She brushed a hand over the bushes next to her and they began to smoke, then to blaze. It lit up the smile on her face. There was an odd light in her eye, something not quite sane. No one who smiled when they looked that angry was sane.

“You-” Yang began, twisted to look at Mercury, but then she saw the expression on his face and the words stopped. It couldn’t have been clearer that they hadn’t lured her here, not when they both looked so horrified at the sight of her.

“Oh no, you’re not the one who they tried to trick tonight,” she said, as fire leapt from the bushes to low-hanging branches, then from tree to tree, until Ruby could feel the heat from it pressing against her face. Mercury bared his teeth. Emerald took a step back, then cringed as Cinder’s eye honed in on her. “You had one order. To _obey_. Do you think I take betrayal lightly?”

Emerald was transfixed. She couldn’t take her eyes off Cinder. Her weapons were still at Yang’s feet, but she didn’t even glance at them.

“Go.”

Mercury said it so low that Ruby almost didn’t hear it. He didn’t look at them, not at Ruby or at Emerald. Only at Cinder. She looked like a god, with the fire spreading from tree to tree behind her. Something ancient and unstoppable.

Cinder tilted her head towards him. Her eye was blazing with an Aura like Ruby had never seen before. Was this the power of the Maidens?

“Mercury. I had thought you would know better.” She reached towards him, hand open. “You know you won’t be able to win. Come back now, and we can forget about this.”

“Mercury,” whispered Emerald. She sounded terrified. Mercury still wouldn’t look at her as he took one step, then another, away from them. Towards Cinder. “Mercury!”

He stopped in the middle ground, exactly between them and Cinder. With the fire blazing in the trees around Cinder, all Ruby could see was his silhouette.

“Emerald, go.”

They gaped at him. Mercury shifted into the same fighting stance he’d used in the Vytal Festival against Yang. He’d put himself directly in between Cinder and them.

Cinder’s cool expression morphed into one of distaste.

“So this is the choice you make. I thought your father had trained you better.”

“Get her out of here!” Mercury ordered Ruby, flame-light dancing across his face, and then lunged towards Cinder.

Emerald jerked forward, towards him, but Ruby dragged her back, throwing them both through the underbrush.

“We have to go!” she said, panic thrumming through her. This was bad. This was really, really bad. No one knew where they were.

And Emerald was still fighting against her, even as they stumbled forward.

“Hey, we’re leaving!” Yang ordered, but Emerald shook her head.

“He needs help!” she said thickly, still trying to turn back, even with the forest fire raging around them. “She’ll kill him!”

“He’s trying to protect you!” Yang shouted, but Emerald kept struggling. Yang groaned, glancing backwards, then shoved Emerald forward. “Fine! I’ll go back for him. Keep running!” She glanced at Ruby. “If I die for him, I’m gonna be pissed, Ruby!”

Then she sprinted back into the inferno, Ember Celia whirring, and Ruby grabbed Emerald by the wrist and put as much power into using her Semblance as she could carrying someone else. This time, Emerald didn’t fight her.

They made it out of the forest and onto dry earth when she stopped channeling Aura. They were near the road. Ruby couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but she didn’t want to use all her Aura when they might need it later. At least the forest fire would be behind them.

“Come on, we’re almost there!”

And then Emerald sagged to her knees, dragging Ruby down with her. For a horrible, breathless moment, Ruby thought this whole, desperate thing was a trap after all. But Emerald wasn’t trying to pin her. She’d forgotten about Ruby entirely, eyes fixed on the figure in front of them, and the tangle of their arms and legs was incidental. All the fights they’d had, and Ruby had never seen Emerald look as scared as she did in that moment.

Cinder was standing in front of them, so angry that her outline blurred with the heat of her Semblance. There was fire curling around one of her fists.

The other was holding up Mercury.

He didn’t have the strength to do it himself. He was barely conscious, sagging in her grip. There were burns on his clothes, a deep, seeping wound on his head, and when Cinder threw him in front of her his Aura rippled faintly and then stuttered out as he crashed to the ground, groaning. Just like Pyhrra’s had. And Ruby had seen Pyhrra die, she knew that Cinder didn’t show mercy, but Mercury had been her own ally. He tried to rise and collapsed back. His legs were gone, prosthetics that Cinder had broken so completely Ruby could barely tell what they used to be. What was still attached to his limbs was melted slag. He didn’t try to get up again. Yang was nowhere to be seen.

Yang was nowhere to be seen, and Ruby’s mind dissolved into grey static.

Cinder didn’t pay him any mind at all. For the first time since the Fall of Beacon, she wasn’t paying Ruby any mind either, staring at Emerald with her face in a rictus of fury. Still trying to untangle herself from the girl, Ruby felt her chest hitch with a sob.

“You would _dare_ ,” she snarled, and her voice was different than Ruby remembered, rougher and crazed with fury, “You _dare_ think you could betray _me_?” Emerald was frozen, dead weight, and Ruby couldn’t reach her scythe, had never been good enough at hand-to-hand to be able to match someone on Cinder’s level. They needed to go, they needed to get away, but Emerald wouldn’t _move_. “For _her_?! You are _nothing_ without me!” She held up her hand, shedding fire from her eyes, from her open palm. Mercury shuddered at her feet. Where was Yang, where was she _ohgodsRubyhadkilledhersister_ -

Emerald shook her head, wordless. There were tears on her cheeks, and Ruby, still scrabbling for a weapon, couldn’t tell if she was answering the question or pleading.

Cinder glanced back at Mercury. The fire in her hands was swelling, spilling through her fingers. Ruby could feel the heat from it already. But Emerald couldn’t move and Ruby wouldn’t leave.

“You think you could stop me?” she demanded, prodding at Mercury with her foot, “I don’t even need a _weapon_ to defeat you.”

Barely conscious, Mercury curled away from the heat of the flames dripping off her.

“Dad, no,” he said thickly.

Cinder looked at him, face twisted with rage and disgust, and Ruby realized with perfect clarity that she wasn’t going to stop. She was going to kill Mercury, then Emerald, and then Ruby herself.

And then the air around her blurred, and Ruby’s head snapped back with the force of the air displacement, dust flying around her. When it cleared, Yang was between Cinder and Mercury, the steam from Ember Cecelia’s recoil curling around her. One hand knocked Cinder’s off course, the fire slamming into the ground a foot away from Mercury’s face. The other one was made of metal, with the experimental holster still attached.

That one had gone clear through Cinder’s chest and out the other side again.

Cinder made a horrible, choked sound. Emerald clapped a hand over her mouth, but not before she made a cry like a wounded animal. She lurched forward, a broken puppet; Ruby grabbed her and they both tumbled into the ground again.

Yang looked like she was going to be sick. She pushed her arm deeper anyway.

“Try hurting my sister again, bitch!”

Cinder stared at her, mouth open. Then at the arm disappearing into her chest.

“You-” She began. Her head jerked towards Ruby, or maybe Emerald, and ugly rage crawled over her face, “ _You-_ ”

“Eyes on me!” Yang yelled but Cinder ignored her, flames spiraling from her hand towards them. It was too fast to move out of the way. Ruby threw herself around Emerald, trying to shield her from the flames. They both jerked at the sound of an explosion.

There wasn’t any pain. Ruby waited, but still didn’t feel anything besides the frantic, panicking breaths of Emerald, who was curled into a ball underneath her.

She looked up.

For a second, she saw Pyrrha’s body overlaying Cinders. She remembered how she had looked, in that last instant. How could Ruby forget, when she saw it every night in her nightmares? She had gone all-over orange, and then she’d just…disintegrated. The wind had blown her away. There had been nothing left.

Then she blinked, and Pyrrha was gone. Cinder was nothing like her. There was some color to her, the last dregs of her Aura, but it was so shot through with black that it was impossible to tell which one it was. Yang’s arm was still through her chest. She reached for it with a hand, then crumbled into nothing. The patch she wore over her eye tumbled into the dirt.

Yang stared at the place she’d been, red eyes wide. She didn’t seem able to believe what she’d done. _Ruby_ didn’t believe what she’d done.

“That’s what you get, bitch,” she said, but her voice was shaking. “Ruby, you okay?”

Ruby tried to untangle herself from Emerald. This time, Emerald let her go, staring at the empty space behind Yang. There was an edge of grief to her expression, but there was relief too. Ruby hoped that the one outweighed the other.

“We’re alright,” she replied, not sure she believed it. Yang nodded shortly. Her Semblance was still active; she glowed with it. There was red in her eyes, red on her arm. She looked more than human. It hurt to look at her.

She glanced back at Mercury.

He hadn’t managed to move far, not with his legs like that, and not with a head wound like that either. For a moment Ruby thought he was looking at the not-Cinder space too, but it was Yang he was staring at with disbelief.

“Mom?” he whispered. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he went down, too fast to see the expression on Yang’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi at shitlinguistssay.tumblr.com any time!


	3. Volume 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me! Here's the last chapter of this work. :)

Mercury woke up in a room filled with sunlight, something heavy pressing him down.

That wasn’t right. His head was pounding, making him muzzy and confused, and his whole body ached, like the early days after the old man had decided he had to start training seriously, but it was the light that was wrong, and it took him a few moments to realize why.

There was no sunlight in that creepy, _other_ ish place where Salem made her base. There was something that lit the air enough to see by, but there was no sun, no day, no night, only the Grimm and the sense of wrongness in the air, making everything feel off-kilter.

If there was sunlight here, where was he?

He blinked, still hazy. What was-

And then he remembered. He remembered everything.

Emerald. _Where the fuck was Emerald?_

Mercury reeled up. That was as far as he got before his vision went to grey static. When it finally cleared, he was in a room that looked like it came out of one of those shit books Emerald would read when they were laying low. White walls, with a cheerful blue rug. Someone had hung a poster of a boy band opposite the bed. There was a large window to the left, letting in even more of that impossible sunlight, edged in curtains that were frothy with lace. There was an empty chair next to it. He was wearing unfamiliar, too-large clothes that from the smell of it had been soaked in booze at some point.

The heavy warmth was a blanket that- had it been _tucked in_ _what the f-_ pulled off, slipping half off the bed. The aching in his bones turned to a shriek of protest at the movement. And there was something else, something wrong with his balance that almost made him fall off the side of the bed. His legs. What had happened to his legs?

He ripped the blanket up enough to see. Someone had taken them off. Someone had _gotten close enough to take them off_ , where were they, where was he and where the _fuck_ was Emerald?

He forced himself to calm down enough to look. Either his legs were in the room or they weren’t. He couldn’t make a plan unless he knew the facts.

They were on the table close to the window, laid out carefully. Even then, he could see the damage that had been done to them.

Mercury picked up the closest one, running his hand over it carefully. It had been broken all to hell; and this was the _better_ one. His fingers snagged on jagged metal, then empty air.

“You fucking bitch,” he breathed, not able to believe it. She’d _gotten_ him those legs, because the first and last lesson Marcus Black had given him was to fight dirty, and those blades he’d gotten Mercury with had been treated with a poison so strong they’d had to take his legs off at the knee. She’d gotten him these legs, and maybe she hadn’t been involved in their care past that but she’d still monitored his upkeep of them until he could walk again and found someone to show him how to do maintenance so he wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else ever again.

Fucking _bitch_ , he mouthed again, feeling the broken prosthetics. As his fingers pressed down, a piece crumbled off in his hand.

He couldn’t salvage this. He’d have to buy new ones, and after everything that had happened, every dirty job Salem had sent him on, it was only a matter of time before someone recognized him. That was if he could even afford it, which he couldn't.

From the other side of the bed, there was a soft noise. Marcus Black had trained him well; Mercury reacted instinctively even as the lack of legs threw off his balance, jerking back, one hand up, the other already ready to throw the leg at whatever enemy was there.

It was the Ruby girl, the one who made Cinder so angry it choked her. The one who was powerful enough to take Cinder’s eye out and freeze the Grimm Dragon, who all the other students fighting Salem followed like a leader.

She was…sleeping?

The girl that had fought Cinder to a standstill on top of Beacon was listing dangerously to the side of the chair she was sitting in next to his bed, face slack.

What the fuck was she doing there? Watching him, obviously. That was fair. That was expected. Of course they were going to be watched. He and Emerald hadn’t been naïve enough to think that they’d just believe them when they asked for help; they’d just been desperate enough to deal with the consequences later. Was she just pretending to sleep? Was this some kind of trick?

…She was _snoring_.

Slowly, Mercury lowered his arms. If she was here, it meant that they’d gotten away. Mercury was still fuzzy on the details, but if she was here, and not dead, it had to mean that they’d beaten Cinder, and actually made it out. He let out a shaky breath, relaxing against the backboard. They’d actually made it out. They’d done it.

He was still figuring out what he should do when the girl snorted and fell out of the chair completely. Mercury stared, confused and alarmed, as she woke up with a squawk and scrambled up, clutching the chair like a raft. Not a test then …was she just actually dumb enough to fall asleep right next to an enemy?

Then her eyes landed on him. She stared.

Mercury stared back, grip on his leg tightening again. He didn’t know what to expect. They were enemies, particularly him and her sister. He’d come damn close to killing half her friends, and he’d openly allied with Cinder, who’d done more than come close.

But she’d agreed to help. And then she had.

“Oh,” she said, smiling nervously, “You’re awake!” But she didn’t seem to know what to say after that.

“Where’s Emerald?” His voice came out in a rasp.

“She’s fine,” she told him, “You shouldn’t be sitting up, you’ve been unconscious-”

“Where is she?” He wasn’t in any position to demand things. He knew that. But if something had gone wrong, if Emerald- then the whole thing had been pointless.

Ruby Rose had stopped talking when he’d cut her off, looking surprised. Like an orphaned baby deer or something. But she didn’t say any of the things he’d expected, about how she was the one asking questions or he would need to do something for her first. None of the things that he would have said.

“She’s alright. She’s eating something, and then she’s probably going to be right back here.” She smiled, for some unfathomable reason. It was a little too knowing for Mercury’s taste, then nodded at the empty chair on the other side of his bed. “This is the first time we’ve gotten her out of the room, actually. It figures.”

That- Good. Maybe she would actually stay close, so he could keep an eye on her. It was habit now, after the way Tyrion and Watts had looked at her in the halls of Salem’s palace. Once it had become clear that Cinder didn’t care to protect her anymore.

“She told us not to take them off.” For a second Mercury didn’t know what she was talking about. Then he realized she was looking at the leg in his hands, with enough pity that he wanted to beat her over the head with it. “But we had to treat the burns.”

He hadn’t even noticed the bandages. Sloppy, unbelievably sloppy. His old man would have had him training until he couldn’t stand for missing something so obvious.

More importantly, Emerald had absolutely no business giving away his secrets like that. Not ever, but especially not now. They would need every secret they could keep hold if they wanted to survive this.

The girl held out a bottle of water.

“Here. You should drink something.”

She looked so sweet and innocent. Even Emerald couldn’t pull a con this well. Mercury had absolutely no idea what to do with her. She couldn’t possibly think that he’d be dumb enough to fall for something so obvious.

Mercury’s throat ached, he was so thirsty. His lips were cracked with it. But even if the water wasn’t drugged, reaching for it would mean letting go of the piece of metal in his hands, his only weapon. He couldn’t do it. Not with his legs shattered like this. Not even for someone who’d got them out.

When the silence stretched, he pulled up a painful smile.

“Oh, ladies first.”

Confusion crossed her face. Ruby looked from the water to him. But then her expression cleared, and she cracked it open, taking a long swallow. Then she held it out to him. A show of trust.

“You’ve been unconscious for two days. If you can drink something, you should.”

He should wait longer, to see if anything happened to her. He should make sure that she hasn’t taken some kind of antidote prematurely.

But she’d helped her, even when she hadn’t had to. Even though it would make her life so much more difficult.

He couldn’t remember much about after his fight with Cinder. It was a blur, different kinds of pain, and heat, but he was sure that he remembered fire spiraling towards Emerald, who was frozen in place, and he was just as sure that he remembered this annoying girl, who’d been the bane of their existence for over a year, who they’d tried to kill more times than he could count, throwing herself in the way.

Slowly, trying not to show how reluctant he was, Mercury placed his leg back down on the blanket and let go of it. He could do shows of trust too, as long as it was just that. A show.

“Thanks.” He drained the bottle in a matter of seconds. Mercury wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, pretending like he wasn’t watching Rose as he did it. As far as he could tell, no one else had been in the room for a while. That meant that for the moment it was just him and Red.

Well, this was as good a time as any to kick off the next bit of their conversation. “So, when are you planning to start this little interrogation?”

Because he knew what was coming. It only made sense. They were scrambling to find out Salem’s plans, and then the two smallest of her disciples stumble into their hands

He was grateful that Emerald wasn’t in the room, now that he thought about it. If he started it preemptively, he could keep Red off balance. Keep in control. Emerald would just jam up the proceedings, and her being there would remind them that they had some perfectly good leverage against him after all. The longer she stayed away, the better. She was good at cons, at playing the part of the naïve, scared girl, until people missed how naïve and scared she really was, but she didn’t know how to handle an interrogation. Mercury was the one who couldn’t talk without making people want to cut him off at the knees. The longer she was away from him, the better it would go for her.

But as good at playing naïve as Emerald was, she paled in comparison to this one. Ruby Rose tilted her head, for all the world completely lost.

“I’m not here to interrogate you.”

“…Really.” The saddest thing was, Mercury actually believed her. These kids were less than half trained for the job they’d taken, that much had been obvious from the beginning. “You just decided to wait for me to wake up all on your own, without any backup?” he repeated, because even knowing she would do something so stupid didn’t make it easier to believe, “Kind of amateurish.”

“Who says she’s alone?”

_Your right side, boy. You’re so busy compensating for the left you don’t even notice it._

Mercury flinched. Sloppy, to have not looked around the whole room. Sloppy and _stupid_ , and he’d been trained better.

Yang Xiao Long was leaning against the wall, arms folded tightly across her chest. The bright yellow of her prosthetic was a shout against the dark tones of her clothing. So was her hair.

So were her eyes, narrowed and furious and blood red in a way that was incredibly familiar.

Mercury really, really wished that he hadn’t let go of the prosthetic. Grabbing for it now would be too obvious a move.

“Ah,” he managed.

“Yeah!” she snapped, coiled so tight he wouldn’t be surprised if she launched herself at him, “Looks like you owe _me_ an apology!”

Mercury should have had some quip to throw back at her, for all he was a prisoner, only he couldn’t stop staring.

She glared him up and down, then pushed off from the wall.

“Go tell the others he’s up,” she told her sister without looking at her. Xiao Long's eyes were still on Mercury. “They’ll want to know.”

Ruby frowned.

“We agreed,” she said, and she didn’t sound happy, “This wasn’t the time for that.”

“I’m not interrogating him. I told Ozpin I wasn’t doing his dirty work. Mercury and I have some unfinished business.” Ruby stood, but didn’t make another move. “I’ve got it, Ruby. Go.”

With one last worried look between them, Ruby went. Yang didn’t stop glaring at Mercury as she took the vacated seat and spun it around, sitting so she was leaning against the back of it. Ruby shut the door with a click reminded Mercury of gunshot.

Then it was just the two of them.

Her eyes were blood red. How had he not noticed it before?

He had, he knew. He remembered noticing it vaguely during the fight at the Vytal Festival, after Emerald’s illusion had made her attack what she thought was him. Her eyes had flared brilliant red, and a faded memory had tugged at the pit of his stomach.

He’d noticed, because he was too good to do otherwise, but it had been easy to dismiss. That was when things had started picking up, and there was too much to do. Plenty of people had red eyes, he was sure. It couldn’t be that uncommon. Fucking Emerald had red eyes, and she was common as dirt.

But then Cinder had taken them on that trip to the bandit tribe, and Mercury had seen _her_ face to face for the first time in years, and it was the same exact shade of red. That was when it had really clicked. Because eyes he could brush off, but not the shape of their faces, not the cowlick. Altogether, it made a pretty damning picture.

He hadn’t meant to let anyone know. He’d kept it from Salem, even from Cinder, but from the look on Xiao Long’s face, she knew. He didn’t know if he had told her, or if something had happened in the fuzzy stretch of his memory between his fight with Cinder and waking up in this bed, but she knew and Mercury could only guess how it would affect their chances of survival.

“How long have you known?”

Mercury had been prepared for questions about Salem, about her plans for the Relics and the Maidens and the people who followed her. He’d opened his mouth to start negotiating and choked.

That…was a really strange place to start an interrogation. A bad place, even.

“Come again?”

Scowling impatiently, she gestured at her eyes. She was still wearing her gauntlets, he couldn’t help but notice, but the point she’d used to kill Cinder was gone.

“How long have you known about her?”

“About Raven?” he guessed warily. Her eyes- Raven Branwen’s eyes, in a face that was shaped the same except for the hair framing it- narrowed. “What about her?”

“You said-” Xiao Long cut herself off abruptly. When she looked at him again, her eyes were still red, and just as furious. “Tell me that was some sick joke of yours,” she demanded instead, “Tell me you just stole some old documents and found out who my mother is and that this is some pathetic attempt to manipulate me.”

“None of your government documents mention Raven Branwen,” he said blankly, which probably wasn’t the best thing to say to defuse the situation. Did he have a concussion? “What’re you talking about?”

“You-” She stopped herself again, and visibly wrestled with herself before answering, “You called me mom, when I- when Cinder died.”

Oh _shit_.

“Oh, shit.”

Definitely a concussion. He definitely, definitely had a concussion and it was going to get him killed, from the expression on Xiao Long’s face, because that was as good as a confession. There was only one person Yang Xiao Long looked like and now that he’d slipped up it was clear that they _both_ knew it.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“What would that have done?” he demanded blankly, and her jaw dropped in apparent outrage, “What would it have mattered? We weren’t friends. We’ve been trying to kill each other for over a year. What would knowing have changed?”

Xiao Long was furious at this. “It would have changed _everything_!”

“Oh yeah? How?”

She glared down at the floor, arms crossed. Finally, she bit out another question.

“How old are you?”

What did that matter? That didn’t have anything to do with anything.

But as the silence stretched, her eyes narrowed even further, seeming to go an even deeper red. Mercury was uncomfortably reminded that he was trapped in the bed, without a working pair of legs to get him out of it.

“Eighteen.”

She didn’t seem happy to hear this. She would be nineteen, he remembered from the dossier Cinder had made of the Vytal Festival students. Older. 

“Are you the reason she left then?”

Mercury laughed. It was stupidly dangerous, to laugh in front of an enemy when you were this defenseless, but he couldn’t help it. The idea that Raven Branwen had run off to play homemaker with Marcus Black was too much.

“More like I was a business transaction. They ran in the same circles, and my old man wanted to see what their blood would do together. Maybe she was interested too, I don't know.” Mercenaries ran in a small circle, especially ones on the same level as Raven and Marcus Black. They’d run jobs together, and then fallen into bed together, at least once. Not like his old man had ever held back telling him about that. He’d always been very clear on where Mercury came from.

“But you knew,” she insisted.

“Knew what?” he demanded defensively, “I didn’t know you were her daughter until Haven!”

Xiao Long only scowled, like he was being stubborn on purpose, and not like she wasn’t being clear about what she fucking wanted to know.

“You knew _her_!”

Oh. _Oh._

Mercury held up his (still regrettably weaponless) hands, because he was not going down for this. He’d come too far, survived way too much, to end up dying because he’d finally found someone whose parent issues were worse than his.

Hadn’t Raven said she’d wanted them to kill her brother, when they’d met with the Branwen tribe? Nice to know that fratricide ran in the family.

“She came around a few times, saw how training was going. That was it.” The last time she’s actually shown up at Marcus Black’s house, Mercury would guess he was about ten. It had been just about when the old man had tipped over from the occasional drink after a job to the drink before, during, and after. She hadn’t come back after that.

They hadn’t talked when Cinder and Watts had dragged him and Emerald to the Branwen tribe, not past an offhand remark or two about them being children. Raven had said that she looked forward to seeing what the two of them could do in a fight, and her eyes had slid to him. That was it. They’d both known better than to do anything else with Cinder and Watts so close, but he’d still caught himself wondering if she would have done otherwise, if circumstances had been different.

Had she actually done more than that for Xiao Long’s father? Had Blondie _actually expected_ Raven Branwen of all people to play mother?

Xiao Long cocked her head. Mercury shook off any thoughts that weren’t about his immediate present.

“Training?”

For fucks sake. Mercury felt his lips pull back into something resembling a smile. He gestured down at himself, pretending like his entire body didn’t ache, like his legs weren’t in pieces and he wasn’t trapped in this bed until they figured out what they were going to do with him.

“What, do you think you can get _all this_ without working at it?”

Xiao Long sat back in the chair. Mercury hadn’t even realized how far she was leaning over before that. Her expression was still closed off, but her eyes were troubled past the anger. Like she was looking for something. God, these _children_ were worse than Emerald. Mercury was astounded and incredibly annoyed that he hadn’t managed to kill them when they were enemies.

But the way she was looking him up and down wasn’t the way her sister had. She at least hadn’t forgotten he was a threat. This was the way their mother looked at him, when she had visited and when they’d got to the tribe. Assessing. If this was how Xiao Long reacted just to finding out her mom had another kid though, he wasn’t about to tell her that.

She closed her eyes for a long time. When she opened them again, they were lilac, and Mercury would never admit it, but it made it a little easier to breathe.

“Alright,” she said, though Mercury couldn’t for the life of him see what was so alright about any of this. She looked down at the bed, tapping against the side of the chair. “Alright.”

“Great,” he replied, falsely cheerful, “So what comes now?”

She didn’t answer like her sister would have either. There weren’t any hasty assurances that he would be safe, that they weren’t going to keep him prisoner. Yang Xiao Long’s mouth pursed.

“Oz wants to ask you some questions.”

Mercury had thought Cinder’d killed Ozpin. Had she lied, or did she not know?

He shook off those thoughts too. It didn’t matter anymore.

“Don’t bullshit me. What’s really going to happen?” Because it wasn’t just going to be questions. They all knew that. He’d allied himself against them, had fought them to a standstill and backwards over and over. He’d worked for Cinder, who’d destroyed their school, and for Salem, who wanted to destroy their whole world. They weren’t going to forget that. They sure as all hells weren’t going to forgive it.

Xiao Long didn’t bullshit him, but she didn’t say anything either.

Before the silence built up long enough for him to try to break it, her eyes fell on his legs, or the lack of them. Was she aware of how the fingers of her right hand curled as she did?

“Ruby’ll bring Emerald back up here soon,” she said finally, “We can wait until then to discuss it.”

Every single instinct his old man had beat into him screeched. Mercury stiffened and tried to act like he hadn’t.

“The fuck do you need her here for?” he demanded before he could stop herself, and Xiao Long’s gaze snapped back to him, closed and suspicious. He was wrecking whatever fragile truce he’d managed to cultivate, but he couldn’t make himself care. “Emerald doesn’t know shit. She doesn’t need to be here.”

“Excuse me?” she said sharply but Mercury talked over her, because whatever they had planned for the pair of them, information or recompense or revenge, he needed to keep Emerald out of it.

“Why would she? It’s not like they would tell her. She’s an idiot, worse than your sister-”

Xiao Long’s metal fingers screeched against the wood of the chair.

“Don’t talk about my sister!” she snarled, red-eyed again, Aura blazing off her.

“She doesn’t know anything that was going on, she only did what she was told, and she couldn’t even do that right,” he said, making his voice go cold and cruel. She was angry. Good. It meant her focus was on him, and not anyone more breakable. “She didn’t even know how to pay attention to them, she’s worse than useless in a fight-”

“Well, we both know that’s not true.”

Mercury’s stomach dropped. She meant the Vytal Festival. Xiao Long glared at him. Her eyes blazed under bright hair, red as blood. The gauntlets around her wrists whirred. It was a warning. Mercury was suddenly, vividly reminded that this girl had killed Cinder.

Frantically, he tried to think of a way to minimize Emerald’s part in the Festival, then gave it up.

“She’s just a stupid kid,” he admitted at last, mouth dry and hating himself. It was weakness. He couldn’t afford to have any weaknesses. “She doesn’t know anything. I’m the damn professional. I have the information you need, not her. Keep her out of it, or I won’t tell you a godsdamned thing.”

“Wait, just-wait.” Xiao Long raised a hand. She was staring at him again, hard. “Do you think we’re going to _hurt_ her?”

What the fucking fuck.

“What do _you_ think is going to happen?” he demanded incredulously, “Maybe Ozpin and the others haven’t told you because you’re apparently all _fucking children_ , but we were working for Salem. They’re going to want to know what we know, they’re going to want us to pay for what we did. We’re the bad guys, Blondie, or did you forget? Why do you think they made you help us?” How stupid did they think he was? He knew exactly what kind of situation he was in. He was trapped here, fucking _helpless_. He couldn’t stop them from doing anything, and if they ended up torturing Emerald for information then this whole thing would have been for _nothing_.

Xiao Long stared at him for a long time. He was getting sick of her watching him when all he could do was sit there.

“Ozpin didn’t make us help you. He told us that it was a trap, actually. We snuck out and did it on our own.”

Mercury opened his mouth to retort to that but found he had no words for that kind of stupidity.

Who would do something like that? Risk everything for a pair of people they hated? He couldn’t understand it.

“Why would you do it then?”

The only thing he understood less was how she frowned at the way he said it.

Her eyes flicked to the scars on his arms, his forehead. He reached up and felt bandage against his temple.

“Was it? A trap?”

Mercury thought of the months in Salem’s base. Emerald sneaking into his room at night because Tyrion was shrieking with laughter in the halls again. The last of Cinder’s patience dwindling in spectacularly violent ways. The choking knowledge that if they put one metal toe out of line around Salem, they were finished in ways they didn’t even have words for.

He shook his head.

Xiao Long shrugged like that explained everything.

“That’s why we did it then. Because we aren’t the bad guys. Besides, it was getting pretty clear that you needed help.”

Well that wasn’t true at all. Emerald was the one who’d been in trouble. She was the one who didn’t know when to back out of a conversation. Mercury was a survivor. He was good at it. He could have handled it.

“Look me in the eye and tell me Ozpin is just going to let us waltz out of here out of the goodness of his heart, now that we’re here. Two of the people who helped take down Beacon.”

She didn’t bullshit him again. Xiao Long looked at the ground, frowning. Maybe she wasn’t so much of a child after all. Mercury could work with that a lot more easily.

“Tell them to keep her out of it. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

He felt awful saying it. Bad enough to even have a weakness, but for someone to know about it? He was practically throwing Emerald into more danger, because the second he said something they didn’t like, they would go for her.

Xiao Long sat back.

“I didn’t even think you liked her,” Xiao Long said, and she sounded more thoughtful than angry for the first time.

“I don’t,” Mercury said at once, and he even meant it. She was a pain in the ass, and she got him into messes like this, and acted like having light fingers meant she could take care of herself. It had just become second nature, somehow, to watch out for her.  That was all.

“But you’re still trying to protect her.”

Mercury opened his mouth to argue and then shut it, annoyed at himself.

For the first time, Xiao Long smiled. It was nothing like Raven’s smile when she’d worked with Cinder, or when she and Marcus Black had shared drinks and reminisced about old marks. But Mercury was suddenly reminded of how Raven had been visiting when he’d hit his first bullseye, the smile she’d made when she’d seen it and the feel of her hand in his hair. This was softer, Yang Xiao Long generally seemed softer than Raven until she was pissed off, but it was close to that.

“Don’t worry about it. I know what it’s like to look after a younger sibling.”

Mercury wrinkled his nose. “She’s not my sibling.”

“Sure,” Xiao Long said, sounding like she didn’t believe it for a minute. She was still smirking, and it was disconcerting to see his own expression on her face. “I’ll still pass along your terms though.”

He knew better to relax. He knew better than to trust anyone besides himself. But there was something in the way she said it made him actually believe her. Some of the tension that had been knotted up in his chest since Beacon fell loosened.

“Thanks.” He made himself say it. He’d owe her one for this, but at least Emerald would be safe. That was what this whole thing had been about, after all. Mission fucking accomplished. Maybe he could actually rest now. Hah.

“That’s what siblings do.”

Mercury meant to respond to that, probably in a way that would fuck everything up again, given his track record, but at that moment there were rapid footsteps from the hall, and then the door burst open and Emerald filled it, tears in her eyes even though she looked perfectly unhurt to him. What an idiot.

“Mercury!”

Unpleasantly conscious of Xiao Long’s eyes on him, he waved a hand.

“Yo.”

“You’re ok,” she whispered, and then fucking launched herself at him.

“Ow! Fuck, I’m not going to be if you don’t get off! Ow _ow_ , what’s wrong with you?” He tried to fend her off, but it was a half-hearted attempt at best and she didn’t pay it any attention. She understood. They were better at being terrible to each other than they were at this stuff.

Emerald hugged him tighter, burying her face into his neck so he could feel dampness on it, but finally wiggled off him onto the free chair. Her chair, from what Red had been saying. He was ridiculously glad that she scrubbed at her face before he could actually see she was crying.

“I’m sorry, this is all my fault!” And it kind of was. Mercury knew how to keep himself safe. He knew when to talk to defuse a situation, and when to clear out of the way. He could read a fucking room. He knew how to deal with the kind of person Cinder had ended up becoming. He would have been fine.

Emerald wouldn’t have been. So it was worth it.

“Yeah, well, I already knew you were pretty terrible.” He grinned as she made an outraged noise and tried to shove him off the bed. “Ow, hey, I’m infirm!”

When he looked up, Yang was watching him. Her expression wasn’t as hard to look at as it had been before. She was smiling crookedly, lilac eyes crinkling with the movement. She nodded once, then got up.

“I’ll get some food for you. I’ll make sure Ren cooked it too, not Ruby or Nora, so you won’t actually die after all the work we put into you.”

It was a subtle excuse to give them time alone, and cloaked in enough sarcasm that maybe he could see it now. How they might be related. He could almost see how it might be...not terrible.

Maybe.

He _definitely_ had a concussion.

Ruby was hovering on the other side of the door, checking on her sister. She looked past her at Mercury and grinned like the last year of their lives had never happened.

Mercury had a nasty feeling that she was going to make him find out if it would be nice, whether he wanted to or not.

“This is so _weird_!” he heard her whisper shrilly when her sister joined her.

Yang huffed. “You’re telling me,” she said right before she shut the door.

They shut the fucking door. Bunch of amateurs. Mercury shook his head and turned to Emerald. She was still sniffling a little, rubbing at her face. He smirked.

“Aw, didn’t know you cared.”

She socked him in the arm. “Shut up! Asshole.”

His old man would have given her something real to cry about. Cinder had slapped her, the times she’d started crying.

Mercury didn’t know what else to do, but he knew he didn’t want to do that.

“Alright, suck it up.” Awkwardly, he patted her on the head. That was what people did, right? Non-murderer people. “Not like anyone’s-”

-dead, he’d been going to say. But that wasn’t true, so he froze, and Emerald was a stupid kid but she knew more than these ones, and she froze too, head bowed under his hand. Mercury could feel her trembling.

“What do we do now?” she whispered, even though the door was closed. At least she knew what was going on.

“It’s gonna be ok.”

She jerked away from him. “Don’t lie to me!” she hissed, only barely keeping her voice down. Mercury got the weirdest sense of vertigo, thinking of the conversation he’d just had with Xiao Long. He really hoped he hadn’t had tears in his eyes like Emerald did. “Nothing’s going to be ok!”

“They’re not going to touch you. I’ll make sure.”

“So they’re going to hurt you instead? How is that better?”

“We’re going to be good little captives for now.” Mercury really, really hoped that it wasn’t obvious how much he was just making shit up. His old man hadn’t trained him for this kind of situation. Not for being a captive, not for taking care of anyone else. Emerald started to shake her head; he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “No, listen to me. We’re going to be very sorry for everything we did. We’re going to do what they say, and answer any questions they have, and you’re going to be Ruby Rose’s new best friend. Got it? And as long as we both do that, we’ll be safe. We just have to make them trust us.”

“How can they do that?” she whispered.

Mercury had absolutely no idea. But he didn’t understand anything these people did, rescuing their enemies with no plan, leaving captives alone. Questioning them about the stupidest, most unimportant shit instead of the big stuff.

“We can’t go back to Salem,” he said, ignoring that, “She’ll kill us if we do. We don’t have anywhere else to go. We have to make this work.”

Reluctantly, Emerald nodded, looking away and rubbing her arms. She was scared. Good. That would keep her alive.

“Don’t worry. You can fool them into thinking you’re nice.” He smirked. “They aren’t very smart.”

“ _Asshole_!” she tried to swat him, telegraphing a mile off because her hand-to-hand was shit. Mercury ducked out of the way.

And then a gust of wind came out of her hand and smacked his head back against the headboard.

Mercury stared. Emerald stared, arm still outstretched, and for a second, Mercury saw tiny flames winging her eyes that faded almost instantly. He pointed.

“Tell me that’s an illusion and you’re fucking with me.”

Emerald’s mouth was open. Her hand was shaking.

“Okay,” Mercury dragged a hand through his hair, “Okay, new rule. We’re not telling anyone about that either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I didn't realize this is one ridiculous scene until I edited it. And it's not even that good. Blame it on Mercury's concussion I guess?
> 
> Some notes on time and ages  
> In this fic it’s been over a year since the Fall of Beacon, so everyone is a year older. For my sake, I decided that Yang is two years and several months older than Ruby, enough that for the majority of the year she’s actually three years older than her sister. So ages are as follows:
> 
> Yang: 19  
> JNR and WB: Between 19-18  
> Mercury: 18  
> Emerald and Ruby: 16
> 
> So, yeah! This is my Mercury is Raven's kid AU. I had a dream about it and this all blossomed out of that idea. Anyway, I hope you liked it. I really enjoyed writing this and I have a lot more planned for this little universe. It won't come out at fast as this one (I had this entirely finished and only needed time for final edits), but I hope you all stick with me for it! The awkward murder children are gonna be ok (eventually).
> 
> Thank you so much for coming along on this journey with me! Let me know in the comments what you thought of my headcanon or where it will go! Please please let me know what you think or chat about RWBY with me at shitlinguistssay.tumblr.com!

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes:  
> 1) I’m assuming that Salem has some kind of magic way to get them from one place to another really fast. I picture it kind of like Raven’s portals, except anchored to different areas instead of people, and left open until Salem feels like taking them down. This is unashamedly for the sake of the plot :D
> 
> 2) This AU follows plot pretty much until the fight at Haven academy. So Yang still met with Raven before meeting up with the others. Salem’s group doesn’t know Ozpin is in Oscar yet. They’re all focusing on the relic in Vale at the moment, so that’s the country they’re all in. 
> 
> Let me know what you think or come say hi at shitlinguistssay.tumblr.com!


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